People Before Profit blog

Senate GOP defeats minimum wage hike

Thu, 01 May 2014 14:54:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) -- By a 54-42 vote on April 30, the Senate tried to open debate on labor-backed legislation to raise the nation's minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by 2016. But its Democratic sponsors needed 60 votes to start debate, and got six fewer than that, so the effort failed and the wage hike bill died, for now.

Forty-one Senate Republicans voted to block debate on the minimum wage hike, as did Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who tactically switched his vote at the last minute to be on the "winning" side and thus able to bring the minimum wage hike up again in coming months.

Other Senate Democrats, except absent Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., voted to open debate, as did both independents, and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. Three Republicans were also absent. More than 20 states, tired of waiting for a dysfunctional Congress to act, have raised their own minimums. Minnesota, Maryland and Connecticut did so in the last two months.

Defeat did not faze sponsoring Senate Labor Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. He has promised backers of the hike that he would bring it up a second time and a third if it failed. If it fails three times, Harkin said early in April, he'd bring it to the voters in November.

But it disappointed union leaders, and leaders of civil rights and women's groups, whose members campaigned for the hike.

"With this vote, America can make a clear moral judgment about where its political leaders stand," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. "This issue deserves more than a partisan response. Raising the minimum wage is bigger than politics. It's the right thing to do. It will create jobs and grow our economy. Politicians are elected to represent their constituents. A 'yes' vote is the way to prove it." Other union leaders agreed with Trumka.

The measure would have raised the wages of millions of workers, most of them working women and many of them single mothers. The minimum wage would have risen in three 95-cents-per-hour steps and it then would have been indexed to inflation. It's now $7.25 hourly.

The bill also would have raised the wage for tipped workers, now $2.13 an hour, in stages to 70 percent of the regular minimum wage. The tipped workers' minimum hasn't risen since 1991 and the regular minimum was last raised almost a decade ago.

Labor's lobbying ranged from mass rallies on Capitol Hill - the latest campaign occurred two days before the vote - to a "raise the wage" bus tour through Northeastern and Midwestern states, concentrating on the states and districts of recalcitrant Republicans, and a joint letter among 255 civic and religious groups advocating a minimum wage hike.

"A raise in the minimum wage is desperately needed because pay for America's workers remains stagnant, while the cost of living continues to rise," the letter said. "In 2007, Congress raised the federal minimum wage by $2.10 per hour to $7.25 as a first step toward achieving its purpose as an anti-poverty measure. Had the federal minimum wage kept pace with the cost of living over the past 40 years, it would be $10.71 per hour today. Instead, the current hourly rate of $7.25 translates to an annual income of just $15,080 per year for full-time work, which is below the poverty line for a family of three."

The letter added that a review of 40 years of studies of the impact of past minimum wage hikes showed virtually no job losses from minimum wage increases, contrary to business and conservative assertions. But the arguments did not sway the GOP or its business backers, led by the National Restaurant Association. NRA's members are the lowest-paying sector of the U.S. economy, federal data show.

The defeat led Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry to call the vote "another sad chapter in the history of obstructionism in the U.S. Senate."

"Raising the minimum wage for 28 million workers should be a no-brainer, yet a minority of senators prevented it from going forward. In the face of such obstructionism, Sens. Reid and Harkin deserve credit for keeping this important issue in the national spotlight," she added.

"Workers have been unable to share in the fruits of their labor because corporations are hoarding profits and holding down wages. Some senators may disagree, but people who work full-time should be able to support their families and live off their wages. Simply put, America needs a raise," Henry concluded.

Saru Jayaraman, president of the Restaurant Opportunities Center - which is organizing and represents the lowest-paid workers - blasted the Senate and said it would take the fight, especially to replace the lower tipped minimum with the regular minimum, to states.

"Congress is at the beck and call of corporations," she said. The minimum wage hike foes include "Fortune 500 restaurant companies that belong to the National Restaurant Association-a corporate lobby that ensures the restaurant industry is home to the lowest-paying jobs in the country year after year, and gets away with telling taxpayers to pick up the tab for their poverty wages.

"The public overwhelmingly supports raising the minimum wage. The majority of small business owners supports raising the minimum wage. An increase to the regular and tipped minimum wage is absolutely going to happen," she declared.

Signers of the pro-minimum wage letter before the vote included the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Steel Workers, the Teamsters, AFSCME, the AFL-CIO, 9to5, AFT, the Asian-Pacific American Labor Alliance, Interfaith Worker Justice, the UAW, Jobs With Justice, the Labor Coalition for Latin American Advancement, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the National Education Association, the National Organization for Women, the Service Employees and the Restaurant Opportunities Center.

Photo: Give America a Raise website.

Alabama says it can fire workers for telling the truth

Thu, 01 May 2014 14:44:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - In certain circumstances, the state of Alabama says, it can fire or discipline a state worker who tells the truth - even if the truth exposes fraud and corruption. But that state "right" appears to fly right in the face of the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court justices met it with reactions ranging from skepticism to incredulity.

At issue on Apr. 28 was a case by former state worker Edward Lane, who uncovered fraud - specifically a state legislator in a no-show job - in an Alabama community college program designed to help troubled youth. Lane testified to the fraud, first before a grand jury and then at two trials of the state rep. The rep was found guilty at the second trial.

Lane's boss, college president Steve Franks, citing budget cuts, fired 29 "probationary" workers but later hired all but two back when he found they really were permanent, not probationary. Lane was one of the two left out of a job.

Lane took the case to court, claiming Franks retaliated against him, a government worker, for exercising his 1st Amendment rights to free speech. He lost in the lower courts, but he appeared to be winning the justices over.

The case is important not just for its specific circumstances, but because whistle-blowing government workers are often the best sources of information about waste, fraud and abuse. Leaving disciplinary power over them in the hands of their bosses when they speak up chills the prospect that they ever will. It also limits their rights of free speech.

When it comes to free speech and state and local government workers, though, the Supreme Court set some past limits. A worker testifying as a citizen has more rights when he or she does so, the court has said before. Same thing if the worker's discussing "a matter of public concern." But if the worker's using info learned on the job, there are times where the state, exercising control over the workplace, can discipline or fire the worker.

The question is where to draw the line. Alabama said it can be drawn even if the worker tells the truth. The justices couldn't believe what they heard. Justice Antonin Scalia was the most incredulous.

"Where did you get this view that the 1st Amendment can be applied only to protection of views and not to expression of facts?" he asked one of Alabama's attorneys. He wasn't alone.

"Let's say he writes a letter to the editor. Can he be disciplined for that?" Chief Justice John Roberts asked. The Alabama attorneys' answers to both questions was that, depending on the circumstances, yes.

The justices weren't convinced. "We've said that government employees can take the knowledge" they gain about waste, fraud and abuse on the job "and go out and use it and be protected" from retaliation, Justice Elena Kagan pointed out. She got Franks' Alabama attorney, Mark Waggoner, to agree. "Yes, that's the heart of the 1st Amendment," he said.

But not entirely, Waggoner added. "Factual testimony based only on knowledge (learned) due to official duties would not be protected," he said. "It's not the forum (used), but the character of the speech that counts. And if it's not 'citizen' speech, you don't get to the 'public concern' question."

Tejinder Singh, Lane's attorney, had a much easier time. "There's a long line of precedents that holds the 1st Amendment applies to all matters of public speech" by public workers, except for a few internal memos, he said. "The principal point of contention is whether the fact that he learned about the facts" of the fraud while on the job "is sufficient protection" of the worker's right to speak. Singh said it is.

So did the unions that filed friend-of-the-court briefs with the justices, all coming down in Lane's corner. "Individuals who work for the government remain citizens entitled to participate in public affairs," AFL-CIO General Counsel Lynn Rhinehart wrote in her brief. "And the public has a strong interest in hearing the views of public workers, who are often among the best-informed citizens regarding the workings of government."

AFSCME, the Service Employees and the National Education Association urged the justices, in their brief, to go even further and protect almost all speech by public workers. The only exceptions, where a "balancing test" now exists, are speech "within the employer's legitimate proprietary control" and speech that doesn't involve a public concern. Waste, fraud and abuse, they said, is a public concern.

"Judged by those standards, a public employee's truthful sworn testimony will almost always (their emphasis) merit protection against employer retaliation," the three unions said. "That's because truthful testimony necessarily implicates public concerns and a government employer has no legitimate reason for retaliating against an employee for such truthful testimony."

The justices will announce a decision by the end of June.

Photo: The Supreme Court is considering whether the 1st Amendment protects Lane and millions of other public workers from job retaliation when they offer testimony about government misdeeds in court. Wikipedia (CC)

Firefighters battle cancer as well as flames in toxic homes

Thu, 01 May 2014 12:48:00 +0000

Most of us are dimly aware of toxins in our homes. Maybe we don't let our infants chew on plastic, or we know not to burn styrofoam in the fireplace. But what if it's your job to enter buildings full of poisonous smoke, shovel burned debris to prevent fires from reigniting, and sift through toxic ash to determine a fire's cause? Firefighters do all those things, and they're seeing increased incidence of cancers as a result.

Last October, researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) published preliminary results from the largest-ever study of cancer in firefighters. Unsurprisingly, they found that firefighters are more likely than the general public to develop respiratory, digestive, and urinary cancers.

"It's all about the plastics," says Mark Johnston, president of Fire Fighters Local 452 in Vancouver, Wash. "Fifty or 60 years ago, when a house caught on fire, it was all wood and natural materials. Now it's all plastic. Think about your house. Your clothes are all synthetic, your carpet is all synthetic, even the wood trim is not wood trim any more."

When today's houses burn, the resulting soot, mists, and fumes contain chemicals like benzene, methylene chloride, perchlorethylene, toluene, trichloroethylene, trichlorophenol, and formaldehydes; metals like lead and cadmium; and minerals such as asbestos and crystalline silica. All of those are known human carcinogens.

Firefighters' protective clothing and respiratory equipment are pretty good, but they're also exposed after the fire is out, particularly if they remove their breathing apparatus during "overhaul" (when they remove flammable material).

"In a burned-up house, all kinds of toxic gases are being off-gassed," Johnston said. "When I started in 1983, we didn't use our breathing apparatus for anything but a fire attack, and when you did your overhaul, you would take that off. We didn't know the science. But the studies now are showing that a lot of the products of combustion are absorbed through your skin."

Firefighters can smell smoke on their hair and skin for days after a fire. Chemicals get into skin through the pores.

And those chemicals are causing cancer - at up to twice the rate of the general population, depending on the type of cancer.

NIOSH undertook its multi-year study after the University of Cincinnati conducted a comprehensive analysis of 32 studies of cancer among firefighters. Those studies showed higher rates among firefighters of testicular, prostate, skin, bone marrow, brain, rectum, stomach and colon cancers, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Johnston has seen co-workers contract rare cancers like liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, testicular cancer and "lung cancer for guys who've never smoked in their life."

If it's a firefighters job to protect the public, it's their union's job to protect them. The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), Local 452's parent organization, has pushed state-level legislation around the country and improved safety practices in local fire departments. It's also developed a cancer registry for union members or their family members to report cancer diagnoses.

At the state legislative level, IAFF wants workers' compensation agencies to acknowledge that these cancers are work-related, so firefighters can get benefits when they're diagnosed. The union has been largely successful, with legislation now passed in 33 states, including Washington and Oregon.

In Washington, when a firefighter is diagnosed with brain cancer, malignant melanoma, leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, bladder cancer, ureteral cancer, or kidney cancer, those conditions are considered "presumptively" work-related. Oregon's list is even longer.

IAFF also considers cancer deaths to be deaths in the line of duty. Local 452 continues to honor two members in that way: Roger Duke, who died of brain cancer in 2009, and Carl Murray, who died of lung cancer in 2013. The local offers an annual scholarship in Duke's name, and plans to erect a stone memorial to the two at the union hall.

IAFF locals have also called for departments to see that protective gear (known as "turnouts" in firefighter parlance) is decontaminated after a fire.

"When I started, the dirtier your turnouts were, the tougher of a guy you were," Johnston said. If you left a fire scene without being covered in soot, you were regarded as a shirker. And turnouts were never cleaned.

But when members came to understand that the soot and grime were toxic, Local 452 complained to the Vancouver Fire Department. Initially the department provided cleaning fluid, 55-gallon drums and a brush. Today, it contracts with Northwest Safety Clean to pick up, clean, and return the turnouts.

"We're trying to change the culture at the fire department," Johnston says. "We're not going to accept this old-time old-school mentality any longer. It puts us at risk."

Don McIntosh is Associate Editor of Northwest Labor Press

Photo: Firefighters attack a smoky fire in Coal Township, Pa., early Monday, March 3. The fire left a couple and their twin 6-year-old daughters homeless. (AP Photo/The News-Item, Larry Deklinski)

Mississippi Nissan workers seek State Department help in dealing with company

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 16:22:00 +0000

United Auto Workers President Bob King announced Apr. 28 that his union and IndustriALL, the global union, have asked the State Department to mediate the battle between the auto giant and workers at its Canton, Miss. plant who are trying to unionize.

The unions say that it makes sense to go to the State Department for help because the U.S. has signed onto Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, a document promulgated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The U.S. is an active member of the OECD.

OECD guidelines call for ethical behavior by multinational corporations in the areas of human rights, fighting corruption, paying fair tax rates, and care for the environment, among other things. The guidelines also mandate fair employment policies and require neutrality when workers decide to organize a union.

The OECD is the economic and social policy forum of the most advanced industrial countries. The OECD Guidelines include labor standards established by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and require multinational corporations to "respect the right of workers employed by the companies to establish or join trade unions and representative organizations of their own choosing."

In order to be a member of OECD a country must maintain a National Contact Point (NCP) that can serve as a forum for mediation and conciliation when there is a dispute regarding implementation of the OECD guidelines. For the U.S. that NCP is a group of experienced mediators form the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service working together under the administrative control of the State Department.

Although actual copies of the union request for State Department involvement are unavailable due to confidentiality requirements built into the process it is all but certain, union sources say, that the request includes documentation of threats against union supporters by Nissan.

Nissan denies that is has threatened union supporters in any way. "Nissan respects the labor laws of every country in which we operate," the auto giant said in a statement.

The union is not alone, however, in its claims that union supporters are being threatened and intimidated. Actor Danny Glover, local elected officials, and churches have supported the union's claims. The NAAP said in its own report last year that there had been "detailed systematic management predictions that Nissan would close the factory if workers choose a union."

"Nissan is a global company that should abide by global standards that the United States and other countries have agreed upon," said UAW President King. "The OECD Guidelines offer a way for the UAW, IndustriaALL, and Nissan to talk to each other in a neutral setting overseen by professional mediators."

The union hopes that by petitioning the State Department together with IndustriALL, it will be able to intensify worldwide support for the Canton, Miss. workers. IndustriALL represents 50 million workers in 140 countries in the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors. Most Nissan workers outside the United States are members of the global union.

They also would like the NCP in the United States to collaborate with the NCP counterpart in Japan and then for the NCPS in the Netherlands and France to get on board. Nissan is a Japanese corporation linked by cross ownership to Renault, the French auto giant. Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Renault, is in charge of Nissan too.

"There is potential here for a multinational mediation process," said Lance Compa, an international labor law and labor rights scholar at Cornell University who is advising the UAW in this matter. He noted that labor unions successfully used an international mediation process ten years ago when they organized a clothing plant in India owned by the French multi-national manufacturer, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute. "It would be a classic labor-management mediation, but this time under international labor standards," Compa said.

The U.S. NCP has three months to decide whether to offer mediation services to the parties. The UAW, IndustriaAll and Nissan must all accept the offer for mediation if the mediation is actually to take place.

Photo: Brazilian autoworkers are backing their brothers and sisters at the Nissan plant in Mississippi. Do Better Together Facebook page

Weak laws let whistleblower at Caterpillar plant hang out to dry

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 14:14:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Ross Baize, a veteran United Auto Worker and safety committeeman at Caterpillar's big plant in Peoria, Ill., found out three years ago that federal job safety and health law protecting whistle-blowers is weak - very weak.

Just over three years ago, a colleague with 38 years of seniority and a nearly-perfect attendance record was inspecting a dangerous jam on an orientation track in the Cat plant. He pulled out debris from in front of a sensor to get the track going again, and "a stop came down, striking his left hand," Baize told senators at a Labor Committee hearing in D.C. on Apr. 29.

It turns out there was no lockout/tagout mechanism on the track to stop it while a worker fixed it. The worker reported the injury and was taken for medical treatment. A whistle-blower complaint was filed on his behalf in the first weeks of 2011, Baize explained.

And Cat suspended the worker for two and a half months without pay. Even though he followed its manual for such inspections, the firm claimed the worker didn't shut off an air pressure valve before checking the orientation track.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigated and later fined Cat $7,000 for the lockout/tagout violation, which the firm paid. But the case didn't stop there.

Even before OSHA's probe and fine, the UAW filed a grievance against the lack of lockout/tagout protection on the track. When Baize and his UAW committeeman told Cat that, Cat's response, in April 2011, was to eliminate his job and knock him down three pay grades.

Thanks to the UAW's contract and his seniority, he later bid for and won a job at his old pay grade.

Wait, the problems whistle-blowers face aren't over. Baize filed a complaint to OSHA about Cat's presumably illegal retaliation. But because the UAW contract says you must try in-house grievance channels first, he didn't file it until 34 days after Cat killed his old job. The Occupational Safety and Health Act gave him only 30 days to file. Case dismissed.

It's cases like Baize's that brought him and other witnesses to Washington on April 29, the day after Workers Memorial Day, telling the Senate Labor Committee that laws protecting on-the-job whistle-blowers need to be stronger - much stronger.

"I learned the day that I called in my complaint that it was probably going to be deemed untimely," he said. And his colleague's story of suspension without pay still is a frequent occurrence in at least his former sector in the Cat plant in Peoria, Baize said afterwards.

It's also common elsewhere, and that led OSHA's administrator, Dr. David Michaels, to urge the panel to strengthen whistle-blower protection laws.

Michaels, supported by Baize and most of the other witnesses - the exception was a GOP-named employment lawyer - all backed measures to put teeth into whistle-blower laws.

He proposed setting a 180-day deadline for filing whistle-blower retaliation complaints, just as several states do now. Michaels also noted that if OSHA dismisses a whistle-blower complaint - either about retaliation or about the job safety problem itself - that's it. There's no appeal. "And that's wrong," he said.

The workers should have the right to appeal, to an independent outside authority, such as an administrative law judge, Michaels said. And if the worker is still not satisfied, he or she should have a "private right of action" - in other words, the right to sue to enforce the law.

And firms like Cat shouldn't be able to get away with suspending whistle-blowers without pay. Michaels says Congress should change the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act to let the agency order immediate reinstatement of workers "that OSHA finds have suffered illegal termination."

And the 1970 law says the disciplined whistle-blower must prove the offending employer hit back "because of" whistle-blowing. Michaels wants lawmakers to change that burden of proof, so the worker has to show only that whistle-blowing was "a contributing factor" to company discipline.

"Employees who stand up for what is right, who act with the public good in mind, and who are brave enough to come forward when others will not, should be held out as models of civil responsibility," not disciplined, Michaels said. "We owe it to all workers to provide effective recourse against retaliation for those with the courage to address wrongdoing or unsafe conditions."

The few senators at the hearing gave the workers, and Michaels, a generally sympathetic reception. But they did not promise any action on the proposals, or on the Protect America's Workers Act, a comprehensive strengthening of the OSH Act. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who sat in on the hearing for a while, introduced that bill, with strong union and Obama administration backing, several years ago. It's gone nowhere.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who chaired the hearing, noted that without the UAW, Baize would have been hit even harder, and with no protection against Cat's retaliation at all. He also pointed out that union workers, because of the protection of a contract, are more likely to speak up about unsafe conditions.

But not always, Baize told Press Associates Union News Service in an informal conversation afterwards. Even with the union contract and the protections it gives, there are still a lot of workers at Cat, he said, who are afraid to speak up and speak out.

Photo: http://www.kirk.senate.gov/

Community and labor unite in fundraiser for VW workers

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 16:03:00 +0000

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- On April 18, Chattanooga for Workers hosted a potluck fundraiser to help send some Volkswagen workers to Washington DC for a national speak out on the truth about working at Volkswagen, their experiences at the plant and the situations that lead up to their injuries. Also their experiences in the UAW organizing drive, and where they are now --unemployed because of their injuries. The fundraiser was held at St. Marks United Methodist Church, in North Chattanooga.

SEIU local 205 organizer Kate Sheets opened up for the event, and introduced the speakers. Guest speakers included two former employees who were fired after both men were injured on the job, labor journalist Mike Elk, Brian Merrit of Mercy Junction, Jared Story of Concerned Citizens for Justice and United Campus Workers, and Michael Gilliland of Chattanooga Organized for Action.

As part of this event, attendees broke out into groups to brainstorm on ways to advance their communities and work forces. After everyone got back together, Chris Brooks of Chattanooga for Workers and a Tennessee Education Association organizer collected and put into shape the ideas for further discussion and action.

The fundraiser was an idea created by Chattanooga for Workers and other thoughtful individuals who stand behind the unionization of Chattanooga Volkswagen workers, and the organization of communities and work places everywhere, something the group believes will help advance the everyday lives for working class people.

Some of the guests at the event included local labor organizers, union members, students and other fellow Chattanoogans, along with TV coverage by News Channel 9. The event was judges a success and brought in $800!

After the speeches, guests socialized, listened to labor songs, and got their pictures taken with personalized messages for Chattanooga for Workers (to be posted soon). A lot of great food was brought to the event as well!

Everyone was very happy with the turn out and this event made the front page of the City section of the Times Free Press. The money raised will go toward the travel expenses for two workers to go to Washington. and also to help with some of their finances.

The Volkswagen workers have not given up! They and their friends and community organizations are very appreciative of all the support nationwide, and even international solidarity.

Photo: A.J. Sorenson/PW

Cleveland workers protest Staples post office counters

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 15:07:00 +0000

MAYFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio-Dozens of postal workers, joined by union activists, held a rally outside a Staples store in suburban Cleveland Thursday to protest what many believe to be a union-busting deal between the public U.S. Postal Service and the private office-supplies retail chain.

The Postal Service, in collusion with Staples, has set up U.S. mail service counters in 82 stores throughout the country. The workers at those counters are non-union Staples employees, not union postal workers.

The American Postal Workers Union, one of the unions representing postal workers, sees the deal with Staples as a move to bust the union and privatize the federal post office.

"The public post office is for the public," Daleo Freeman, president of the Cleveland-area APWU, Local 72, said during the rally. "We're not against the post office expanding its business, but we want to be included in any deals. This is all designed as union busting.".

Led by blaring bull horns, more than 60 people, wearing "Stop Staples" t-shirts, shouted battle cries of "The U.S. Mail Is Not For Sale!" and "Union Busting We Say No, Staples Deal Has Got To Go!"

Motorists along the busy four-lane street honked horns and gave the group thumbs-up signs. The rally was joined by politicians and members of other unions.

"This is our fight too," said Bill Barnes, Executive Vice President of the Cleveland area National Association of Letter Carriers union. "We're all brothers and sisters in the cause for fair wages, safe working conditions and good benefits. That's what makes America strong."

Two Democratic candidates for the Ohio House of Representatives, Michael Houser and Jill Zimon, showed up to support the union, as did Democratic state Rep. Ken Yuko who pulled out his wallet-size union membership book from his days with the Laborers' union and held it high to the crowd. "This is my union book," Yuko shouted. "And you know when they can have my union book? When they pry it from my cold, dead hands. "These are our jobs," he continued. "And we're not going to give them up. You know why? Because we're union."

The state representative ended his fiery speech with, "I'm not going to stand behind you. I'm going to lead the charge."

The union notes that postal workers, unlike Staples workers, take an oath of office, go through stringent training and background checks and are strictly monitored on the job, all of which are protective measures that guarantee the security of the public's letters and packages.

Mark Cautela, senior public relations manager at Staples, said he could not speak to the union's concerns and referred questions to the Postal Service.

Postal Service spokeswoman Darleen Reid of Washington, D.C., issued a prepared statement the day of the rally, saying the arrangement with Staples is for customer convenience.

She said the arrangement "is an opportunity to 'grow the business' and has never been an earmark to pave a way to privatization."

"The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations," Reid said in her email statement. "This retail partnership program could be an innovative step towards generating revenue to ensure the long-term viability of the Postal Service."

Local 72 President Freeman said, "Taking the work of the pubic U.S. Postal Service and turning it over to a private, for-profit business is privatization. Taking living-wage jobs and replacing them with low-wage jobs like the ones Staples offers is privatization."

"We're out here to inform the public what's going on," he said. "The people have the right to know what is happening to their post office."

Photo: Ned Davis, photographer for APWU Local 72.

Postal workers march to save the mail in 50 states

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 13:46:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Chanting "Whose post office? The people's post office!" and "The U.S. Mail is not for sale!" more than 100 Postal Workers and their union allies marched through downtown Washington on April 24, protesting the U.S. Postal Service's scheme to run postal services out of Staples stores.

The demonstration was one of more than 56, in every state in the U.S., on a National Day of Action that the Postal Workers (APWU) and other postal unions called to campaign against the Staples scheme. The Staples plan is a cog in Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe's current campaign to cut costs by firing full-time union workers and giving postal jobs to part-time minimum-wage no-benefits non-union workers toiling at Staples stores.

Donahoe's Staples "pilot project," which postal workers call privatization, is part of his plan to cut costs by trashing workers and reducing service. Donahoe wants to fire 100,000 employees, let another 100,000 go by attrition, eliminate Saturday service, kill door-to-door service, close USPS sorting centers and shutter or cut hours at 13,000 post offices. He also wants to transfer the remaining full-time workers to a new, untried, USPS-run health care plan.

All this has led the nation's postal unions - APWU, the Letter Carriers, the Rural Letter Carriers, and the Mail Handlers, a Laborers Sector - into an unprecedented alliance to mobilize their members and the public to stop his plans and substitute better alternatives.

The 56+ demonstrations are the alliance's second joint effort, following an April 14 joint letter from the unions to lawmakers calling President Obama's budget proposals for the U.S. Postal Service unacceptable. Many of Obama's USPS budget plans track Donahoe's recommendations.

Union members and leaders in the D.C. demonstration made it clear they had little taste for the Postal Service's plan, which would throw hundreds of thousands of minority-group members, veterans, or both, out of middle-class jobs.

"We have a rat in the house and it's spelled S-t-a-p-l-e-s," Metropolitan Washington Central Labor Council President Jocelyn Williams told the D.C. crowd at its destination, one of two downtown Staples stores. Members of the Letter Carriers, the Mail Handlers/Laborers, AFGE, the Office and Professional Employees, SEIU, The Newspaper Guild-CWA, IBEW and the Teachers also marched. Their support, along with backing from the rest of organized labor, gratifies Mark Dimondstein, the new, activist president of APWU.

"Only together will we rise; Separately, we will fall," he said. "This is a fight against the Wall Street privatizers and the postmaster general who works with them." And Dimondstein warned the nation: "Do not be seduced by convenience" of mail handling at Staples stores.

"We're here to say no to outsourcing," added Letter Carriers Executive Vice President Tim O'Malley. "We should put trained APWU postal clerks in private establishments, just as they were in Sears Roebuck stores when I was in Philadelphia."

"This is not just about Postal Service workers. It is about America and it is about survival of the middle class," added Williams, who helped pay for his college expenses by toiling four years as a seasonal Thanksgiving-to-Christmas postal worker.

"We are going to fight this contracting-out of vital postal services," said AFGE President J. David Cox. "I want the Post Office to be processing all of the mail."

"We'll stop this ill-advised scheme by the postmaster general," Mail Handlers President John Hegarty told the crowd.

While Donahoe tries to shift postal services to Staples, he's silent on union-suggested moves to increase USPS revenues, such as expanding its business to include postal banking, notary public services, longer weekend hours, licensing and other services, Dimondstein said.

In their letter to lawmakers, Dimondstein, Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando, Hegarty and Rural Letter Carriers President Jeannette Dwyer made those same points against the president's, Donahoe's cost-cutting and congressional postal "reform" bills that mimic those moves.

"We strongly oppose major elements of the administration's proposed reforms as out‐dated and counterproductive to the goal of strengthening the Postal Service for the 21^st century. The USPS has strongly recovered over the past 18 months as the economy has bounced back and the e‐commerce boom" benefiting the USPS "gathered pace," they wrote.

Without a congressional mandate that USPS must pre-pay $5.5 billion yearly in future retirees health care costs - imposed by a 2006 GOP-passed postal "reform" bill - USPS was profitable last year, they pointed out. The president's budget disregards that, they add.

"Reducing deliveries and slashing the quality of service never made sense as a business strategy. Market research...for USPS found that service cuts would cause mail volume to fall by 7.7 percent and reduce revenue by nearly $5.3 billion - that is, by more than it would reduce costs. Now that USPS is recovering and has eliminated some 75,000 career jobs since 2011, slashing service further makes even less sense. It would discourage businesses from partnering with the Postal Service," their letter said.

"Kicking the can down the road" is not a solution to the Postal Service's most-pressing financial problem, the health care prepayment, the four declared. "The payments are unaffordable now; they will be unaffordable two years from now. The USPS has already set aside more than $50 billion for decades of future retiree health benefits. It's time to repeal the pre‐funding burden that no other private or public enterprise faces."

Ending Saturday pickups and deliveries would kill 81,000 jobs and eliminate the unique advantage USPS enjoys over other delivery services, they point out. Ending door-to-door delivery eliminates 16,000-20,000 more. Indeed, "many customers, like Amazon.com, have already begun to partner with the Postal Service to provide 7‐day delivery," they said.

Photo: Washington, D.C. APWU flickr "Stop Staples National Day of Action."

Postal workers in 27 states rally against Staples privatization plan

Thu, 24 Apr 2014 14:34:00 +0000

Postal Workers (APWU) members and community allies are rallying today at 50 Staples stores in 27 states as part of a National Day of Action to stop the U.S. Postal Service's (USPS's) privatization of retail operations. USPS is contracting mail services to Staples, with "postal counters" staffed with low-wage, high-turnover Staples employees rather than postal employees.

APWU President Mark Dimondstein sid, "The American people have a right to know that their mail is handled by highly trained uniformed postal employees who have taken an oath to protect the sanctity of the mail and who are accountable to the people of the country-whether it's at the Post Office or an office-supply store."

The USPS began contracting out postal services to Staples in October. So far, 80 Staples stores are part of the pilot program. But the USPS plans to expand the scheme to 1,500 Staples locations nationwide at the same time that it is eliminating public post offices.

The union says that the no-bid "sweetheart deal" will compromise the quality, security and reliability that consumers expect and deserve in the handling of their mail. Dimondstein says that an internal USPS document "makes clear that the goal of the program is to replace the good, living-wage jobs held by USPS employees with low-wage jobs in the private sector." He adds:

But this isn't just about postal jobs. Many people are outraged that a tremendous public asset is being turned over to a struggling private company....Staples makes business decisions based on the bottom line, not service to the people of the country.

Research shows that consumers have high regard for postal employees and are skeptical about the Staples deal, according to InfoTrends, which recently completed a report for the USPS Inspector General. Many postal customers, the firm reports, "were uncomfortable with co-location of Post Offices not staffed by USPS employees, such as with the Postal Service's recent partnership with Staples stores."

'I want a real postal employee to handle my mail,' said one woman from an urban location. 'It's like when you go in to a drug store to get a flu shot. You don't want to get it from a regular Walgreen's employee.'

Today's National Day of Action follows protests by postal workers and community allies in Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Berkeley, Calif., and other cities since January.

Many teachers, who regularly buy school supplies at Staples, have joined the APWU in protesting this attempt to privatize postal services. On April 28, the California Federation of Teachers will vote on a resolution asking their members to buy school supplies from other retailers. This likely will be the first of many similar actions by educators to boycott Staples. It's estimated that 30% of Staples revenue comes from back-to-school sales.

For more information, text POSTAL to 91990, or visit StopStaples.com.

This article is reposted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog

Photo: AP

ALPA wins recognition vote at JetBlue

Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:59:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - The third time was the charm for the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) as they won union recognition at JetBlue Airways Corporation with 71 percent of ballots cast, the union announced on Apr. 22.

Though ALPA lost two prior votes at the airline, which until now has been totally non-union, the win this time occurred because the pilots want union protection in case another carrier swallows up or merges with JetBlue. The new unit will represent 2,550 pilots.

JetBlue accepted the results and said it would name a bargaining team, as did ALPA. Months before the vote, in January, the carrier tried to head off the pro-union drive by saying it would raise pilots' base pay by 20 percent from now through 2017. It didn't work.

"The win shows the strong desire of JetBlue pilots to gain a meaningful voice in their future, the certainty of a collective bargaining agreement, and the resources needed to be relevant. These objectives motivated the overwhelming grass roots effort by JetBlue pilots which led to today's vote," the union said in a statement.

ALPA "is ready to work with JetBlue pilots to achieve their goals. They make our union stronger by adding their unified voices to the Association's strong bargaining and advocacy efforts," added Capt. Lee Moak, ALPA's president. ALPA aeromedical advisors and insurance benefits will be immediately available to the JetBlue pilots, he noted.

"JetBlue pilots voted for ALPA so that we have the ability to improve our professional careers ," Capts. Gustavo Rivera and Rocky Durham, co-chairs of the JetBlue Organizing Committee, said in ALPA's statement. "As committed as we are to our objectives, we also want to work with management to ensure we continue to contribute positively to JetBlue's success. We believe in JetBlue and look forward to helping make this company one of the best in the industry."

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Fight for $15 takes step forward

Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:55:00 +0000

Two hugely significant reports just released have given credibility and energy to the fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage. That fight has been carried by fast food workers striking and taking other job actions across the country with assistance from the Service Employees International Union, other unions, faith leaders and community organizations.

New York based think tank Demos released a report that shows that fast food CEO's make 1,000 times as much as their average full time employee. Given the fact that most fast food workers don't work full time, the inequality in take home is even more obscene.

This new report completely undermines ANY legitimacy the fast food industry had in arguing against President Obama's initiative to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and tie it or index it to increases in the cost of living.

The most egregious example is Starbucks whose CEO takes home $36 million a year. But Taco Bell, KFC, Chipotle and others are right behind the latte giant.

The Washington, DC think tank Institute for Policy Studies also just released a report on restaurant CEO pay showing that 20 of the largest restaurant chains in America rip off the American tax payer by $200 million a year by paying their CEO's in tax deductible stock options worth $660 million a year.

Arguably the worst problem in the American economy is the huge gap in wealth and income between those at the top of the economy and everyone else. Wages have essentially stagnated for 40 years while the income of the top 10 percent has grown astronomically. The stagnation of wages at the bottom of the economy has starved consumer spending and demand for goods and services. The huge CEO pay, shareholder returns and other unearned income at the top of the economy has done nothing for the American economy as it has been hoarded in offshore tax havens or invested in the lowest wage countries around the world. This last point is discussed in detail in the book I co-wrote with economist Dr. Richard Levins called "Getting America Back to Work."

Photo: Fight for 15 Facebook page

Workers win two in the courts

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 16:14:00 +0000

Two separate groups of union workers - public workers in Florida and American Airlines retirees nationwide - racked up big wins in separate courts in recent days.

The 85,000 Florida state workers, represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, District Council 79, got their win from the U.S. Supreme Court on April 21. The justices, without comment, let stand a lower court ruling tossing drug tests for at least 52,000 - 60 percent - of them.

Three days earlier, a federal bankruptcy judge in New York tossed out the attempt by AMR, American Airlines' parent firm, to end its payment of health care and life insurance benefits for 47,000 retirees, most of them unionists. AMR has since merged with US Airways.

Right-wing Gov. Rick Scott, R-Fla., ordered the drug tests in March, 2011. AFSCME and the Florida branch of the American Civil Liberties Union took him to court, saying the government-wide tests violated workers' rights, privacy and the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The tests were stalled until the case was concluded.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled for AFSCME, the workers and the civil liberties group, with a caveat: The state could still test the 33,000 workers in public safety jobs. Scott wanted everyone tested, both pre-employment and while at work. By contrast, the U.S. district judge in Miami tossed out Scott's tests for all workers, public safety or not.

Scott went too far one way and the lower court went too far the other way, the circuit court said. The Supreme Court, without comment, upheld that split decision.

"This relief swept too broadly, enjoined both constitutional and unconstitutional applications of" Scott's executive order mandating the testing, the circuit court had said. The district court banned testing all the workers "without examining the specific job categories to be tested. What the Supreme Court's case law requires, in contrast, is that the trial court balance the governmental interests in a suspicionless search against each particular job category's expectation of privacy.

"Among the covered state employees, for example, are law enforcement personnel who carry firearms as well as employees tasked with operating heavy machinery or large vehicles -- groups the Supreme Court has held may be drug tested without individualized suspicion. As to those safety-sensitive employees, the executive order's application would most likely be constitutional, and, therefore, the district court's order cannot stand as written."

In the American Airlines lawsuit, bankruptcy judge Sean Lane said contracts covering the health benefits and life insurance "lack language categorically reserving" AMR's right to dump the coverage. The air carrier's parent firm wanted to shift the costs to the retirees, letting them buy policies at groups rates from it. Lane said no. AMR said it might appeal.

Photo: Supreme Court building. AP

Workers Memorial Day to highlight jobs that kill

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:54:00 +0000

NEW YORK (PAI) - Eddie Mallon is 70 years old. As a Laborers Local 147 member in New York, he worked as a sandhog for 44 years. He doesn't now, because that job - eventually - will kill him.

Eddie's doctor ordered him to retire from active work at construction sites. He has silicosis, one of the many job-related illnesses that sicken workers yearly. Later, many die.

Mallon, now a local business agent, fears that could happen to young workers entering the construction trades.

"In my 40-plus years of working underground, I experienced many hazards including very dusty environments and exposure to silica," he told the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's recent hearings on a new, tighter, standard for worker exposure to silica, a cancer cause. "Concrete burns from exposures to cement were also a problem.

"In my experience, the work environment has gotten more dangerous in recent years. Exposures to dust and silica are more extensive because of the use of larger drilling equipment. Dust controls used by contractors today do not keep up with the amount of dust generated and need to be improved. I am very concerned that the young workers coming into our business today will have more respiratory health problems than even we experienced unless these exposures are better controlled."

And many times, companies leave workers on their own to take care of job safety and health. A non-union contractor in St. Louis exposed its workers to lead-based paint dust and flakes during school rehabilitation projects, until the Painters there blew the whistle to the school board - and until the St. Louis Labor Tribune told the story to the whole city.

And Wisconsin construction worker Jose Granados told the OSHA hearing that "I put a wet handkerchief over my mouth and nose" to protect himself from silica dust. His employer provided no protective equipment.

Stories like Mallon's drive Workers Memorial Day observances nationwide, each April 28. This year's ceremonies will include a workers' march in Manhattan to a dangerous job site, and an April 29 U.S. Senate hearing in D.C., on corporate retaliation against whistle-blower workers who expose job safety and health concerns. OSHA recently sued a leading telecom firm in federal court in Cleveland for, in so many words, disciplining 13 whistle-blowers.

But overriding all of that is the fact that more than 4,000 workers die on the job each year - and that doesn't count those who will die after the fact from job-related ills and injuries.

"Each day in this country, on average 13 workers die because of job injuries," the AFL-CIO says. They're "women and men who go to work, never to return home to their families and loved ones. This does not include those workers who die from occupational diseases, estimated to be 50,000 each year - an average of 137 deaths each day. "

"More than four decades ago, the Occupational Safety and Health Act was signed into law, which promises every worker the right to a safe job. That promise has not been kept," Laborers President Terry O'Sullivan adds.

Though construction is prominent in the on-the-job death and injury data, workers die in all sorts of jobs. A recent University of Cincinnati study, commissioned by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, showed higher-than-normal rates of testicular, prostate, bone marrow, skin, brain and rectal cancers among the nation's Fire Fighters. That's because they're exposed to toxic homes when fighting fires, the researchers found.

"Forty-three years ago, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, promising every worker the right to a safe job," Teamsters President James Hoffa adds. "Decades of struggle by workers and their unions resulted in significant improvements in working conditions. Unions have won laws and protections that have made workplaces safer for all workers. Union contracts have also given workers a voice on the job.

"But the toll of workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths still remains enormous. Some Teamster members are particularly at risk, suffering very high rates of job injuries and fatalities. Highway incidents continue to be the leading cause of on-the-job fatalities, and truck drivers suffer more on-the-job fatalities than any other individual occupation.

"Ergonomic hazards cripple and injure hundreds of thousands of workers every year and musculoskeletal disorder cases continue to increase and remain the nation's biggest workplace safety and health problem, without corresponding standards to prevent them."

Workers also fear retaliation if they blow the whistle on unsafe practices. Members of Steel Workers Local 13-1 at the former BP plant in Texas City, Texas - the one that blew up nine years ago, killing 15 people and injuring 170 more - told Press Associates earlier this year that its new owner, Marathon Oil, warned them not to strike over safety hazards. If they do, they'll be permanently replaced.

That's common, the Teamsters' Hoffa adds, and OSHA's Cleveland lawsuit shows.

"Hundreds of workers are fired or harassed by their employers each year simply for voicing job-safety concerns or reporting injuries. Although there are dozens of whistleblower protection and anti-retaliation laws on the books, some are simply too weak and others are just not aggressively enforced due to insufficient funding of the regulatory agencies," Hoffa says.

"As such, whistle-blower and anti-retaliation provisions are not adequately protecting workers who try to exercise their legal rights to speak out on workplace safety," he adds. OSHA now is telling its inspectors to cite employers for disciplining whistle-blowers.

OSHA tries to get employers to cooperate on health and safety issues. Some do so. The agency and construction firms recently announced a national Safety Stand-Down during the week of June 2-6 to address the largest fatality risk in construction: Falls.

"Each year, more than 200 construction workers are killed and over 10,000 are seriously injured by falls. The campaign's goal is to prevent fatal falls from roofs, ladders, and scaffolds by encouraging construction contractors to plan ahead to get the job done safely, provide the right equipment, and train everyone to use the equipment safely," the agency told the Center to Protect Workers Rights.

"The Stand-Down is a voluntary event for employers to talk directly to employees about hazards, protective methods, and the company's safety policies, goals and expectations. Com-panies can conduct a Safety Stand-Down by stopping work and providing a focused toolbox talk on a safety topic such as ladder safety, fall protection equipment, or scaffolds safety."

Photo: Earlier this year workers at the BP Texas City plant that blew up in 2005 told the Peoples World that Marathon, the current owner of that plant, has warned that they will be replaced if they strike over safety issues. AP

Fight for 15 movement hits Springfield, Missouri

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 12:23:00 +0000

On a recent Friday afternoon in Springfield, Missouri a small group of fast food workers gathered in the meeting room of a public library to discuss their fight for a living wage. These workers, all in their twenties, are the organizing committee of Springfield's Fight for 15. The fight for 15 is the organized effort of fast food workers to be paid $15 an hour and have the right to organize a union.

The nationwide movement officially arrived in Springfield, Missouri last week when a small group of fast food workers, local activists, members of Missouri ProVote, and union members from UA, SEIU, and CWA picketed a local McDonald's. Many potential customers ate lunch elsewhere after seeing the picket or reading the literature handed out to every car stopped or slowed by the demonstration.

Management responded immediately to the action. According to the local fast food worker organizer, Josh K., everyone at the store received a 15 cent an hour raise. It is unclear if the raise was due to a miscommunication, or an intentional slap in the face.

While the library is abuzz with children just out of school and ready for the weekend. Josh asks the group, "is 15 cents enough?" They all silently shake their heads. Hearing nothing, he loudly asks, "are you going to be bought off for 15 cents an hour?"

"Hell no" someone says. Josh responds immediately, "well why not?" Joel, a tall, thin young man who used to work at the McDonald's on Glenstone who now works at another fast food burger chain, replies "that like a penny on the dollar." A maintenance worker for McDonald's says, his voice flexing with anger, "I'm tired of getting kicked down."

The fast food workers present all have different stories of how they came to work in the industry.

Brandon worked for McDonald's for years, saved money, and was eventually able to open his own business. Unfortunately, he was broken into and everything he had invested in was stolen. "You need a job" he said shaking his head, "you gotta go back to the one place you hate most."

Some, like Joel were "told everyday growing up if you mess up you're gonna end up working at McDonald's, if you don't study you're going to end up working at McDonald's" Clearly bright and articulate, Joel finishes by saying "well I did everything I alright, I graduated, and I still ended up working at McDonald's."

Most people who eat at places like McDonald's have no idea how the people there are treated, or how terrible their bosses are to them. Promised an annual raise, when Missouri's minimum wage was raised from $7.35 to $7.50 an hour all of the employees of the McDonald's on the corner of Glenstone and Cherry were told that bump in pay was their 'raise' for the year.

No one present even slightly resembles the image of the teenager working for spending money that some have tried to say is the average fast food worker. "When my girl told me she was pregnant" Brandon confides, "the first thought I had wasn't I'm going to be a daddy. It was how the hell am I going to pay for this."

Considering that one of the workers present just got off a shift at this same McDonald's during what he was told was an hour the store made $900 in profit the idea that they cannot be paid better is ludicrous to all assembled. "They are taking advantage of us because there are no other jobs out there" says Daniel still in his uniform. Considering that Walmart is the third largest employer in Springfield the few other jobs available are not much (if any) better.

The abuses these workers continue to suffer on the job extends far beyond the immorally low wages they are paid. While on shift, one worker's mother came in to tell him his grandmother had just died. After speaking for five minutes to console his mother, a supervisor told him that it counted as his break and not to have personal conversations on the clock.

Daniel after being hit by a car while walking attempted to call in and tell his supervisor he couldn't come to work because his wrist was likely broken was told to come in or he was going to lose his job. It wasn't until another supervisor saw how badly swollen his forearm was and that he could not close his hand that he was given 'permission' to go to the emergency room.

Many were threatened with termination for using the restroom. Many were also told not to eat anywhere else while in uniform - even while at Walmart cashing their checks.

To add insult to injury, at the McDonald's on Glenstone and Cherry they are forced to play Christian music all day. Apparently ignorant of the many scriptural exhortations against exploitation, the owner professes to be a devout Christian. One of the workers, almost ill from the hypocrisy, says it plainly: "We're going home every day without enough to make ends meet. Good Christians? The good Christians are the ones f*ck*ng us." Many nod silently in agreement.

As the meeting wrapped up, each made a commitment to each other to bring at least one more person to next week's meeting at the Teamster's union hall. Another action targeting a local fast food chain during lunch rush is planned for the week of April 20th.

It is clear that, while just now getting off the ground in Springfield, the fight of fast food workers for a living wage and the right to form a union is here to stay.

Photo: James Raines/PW

Players and Northwestern to battle at NLRB after Apr. 25 vote

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 15:06:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - In what is, so far, a battle of dueling legal briefs, college football players who want to unionize and their foe, Northwestern University, filed their written arguments with the National Labor Relations Board on Apr. 16.

Meanwhile, the NLRB's Chicago regional office scheduled the union recognition vote among the team's members for Apr. 25 on the university's Evanston, Ill., campus. But the ballots will be impounded until the legal struggle plays itself out.

The case is important for college athletes nationwide. NLRB Chicago Regional Director Peter Sung Ohr ruled on Mar. 26 the football team members, who petitioned for the union recognition election with the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA), are employees under labor law and have the right to organize. Ohr rejected the university's claim that they are "student-athletes."

If the NLRB and federal courts uphold his ruling, college athletes, primarily in football and men's basketball at private universities nationwide, could organize.

Key issues in CAPA's organizing drive among the 85 scholarship football players at Northwestern are medical care payments after traumatic injuries, notably concussions, and establishment of post-scholarship funds to let the players complete their education. The Steel Workers are long-standing backers of CAPA and college players' right to organize.

"For the football program, the players work long hours year-round - 40 to 60 hours a week from summer training camp through the end of the regular season and many hours during the rest of the calendar year as well," CAPA's attorneys told the NLRB. By contrast, the players spend at most 20 hours weekly in class, and classes are scheduled around football practice.

"In practicing, playing in games, and performing numerous other football duties, players are supervised by Northwestern's coaching staff, which also enforces rules controlling many aspects of the players' private lives in furtherance of the team's success. The coaches are not members of the faculty, and teach no courses. The players receive no academic credit for participation in football, and participation has nothing to do with earning their degrees.

"For their efforts and commitment to the football program, players receive room, board, tuition reimbursement and other benefits, provided to them solely because of their selection by the coaching staff as particularly talented football players, and which they lose" if they leave the team or the coach kicks them off.

"This compensation differs markedly from the financial aid Northwestern provides to other students, who are not required to perform services in return for financial assistance and whose assistance is determined by the student's financial need and consists in large part of loans rather than grants. The players' football services thus have all the hallmarks of an employment relationship."

Northwestern, backed by the NCAA, which rules college athletics, says the players are "student-athletes" and paints a dire picture of what would happen if players unionize. Ohr rejected its arguments, noting Northwestern alone turned a $9 million profit on football last year, and players had no right to bargain for any of the proceeds. The NCAA collected $841 million last year from member institutions and rights fees.

Northwestern also invoked a prior NLRB ruling involving Brown University to justify its stand. CAPA's brief dismisses the analogy.

"Northwestern never explains why, if an individual is both an employee and a student - a situation that exists even though Northwestern would have the board adopt the legal fiction that it cannot - his employee status must be disregarded and only his student status honored," CAPA's lawyers say. "There is no logic in such a position."

"If an individual works 30 hours a week as a laborer on a university grounds crew and is paid, is he not an employee merely because the university may offer those positions only to students? Does his employee status depend on whether" class and study time "is less than the 30 hours a week on the grounds crew?...Does it depend on whether he is concerned about the safety hazards to which his labor exposes him, and about whether he is fairly compensated?"

Northwestern retorted that its athletes are not "employees," but "student-athletes," contrary to Ohr's decision. Since they are not "employees," labor law bars them from unionizing, it said. "Scholarship football student-athletes are not 'hired' to perform services," the university said. And their scholarships "are not compensation."

"The fact that scholarship football athletes are subject to rules and discipline does not make them employees," the institution declared. "Northwestern's scholarship student athletes are primarily students."

Northwestern repeated the NCAA's argument that declaring the players "employees" would change the nature of college sports. It did not mention, as Ohr did, that sports earn millions for the schools, from games, TV and cable revenue and sponsorship deals.

Photo: AP

Study: 57 percent of poultry workers suffer ergonomic ills

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 13:59:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Almost six of every 10 of the nation's poultry plant workers - 57 percent - suffer musculoskeletal, or ergonomic, ills from the constant repetitive motions they undertake cutting up chickens and turkeys on the job, a new federal study says.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) study adds that 42 percent of all poultry plant workers suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome, a nerve-pinching disorder common among assembly-line workers, typists and others.

The study's results, released in early April, prompted the United Food and Commercial Workers, whose members include tens of thousands of poultry plant workers, to renew their call for the federal Agriculture Department to drop its scheme to let plant owners speed up poultry processing lines.

USDA wants to institute a new federal inspection method that relies more on plant supervisors than it does on federal poultry inspectors to pick out and discard diseased chickens. It also would let the supervisors be selective about which chickens to eyeball, rather than inspecting each one. Both moves would speed up the lines.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents federal poultry inspectors, has been waging a long campaign against USDA's new inspection plant, which would also reduce the number of inspected poultry carcasses.

Plant owners - including big firms such as Tyson - are campaigning vigorously for the new rules, which they say would let them process more chickens. They would also make more money.

But AFGE's poultry inspectors retort that the speedup and the transfer of inspection to in-plant supervisors increases the risk of food poisoning. The NIOSH report shows the speedup would also increase the risk to workers' health, UFCW says.

USDA wants to virtually double poultry line speeds from 70-91 birds a minute to a maximum of 175 a minute. NIOSH found what UFCW called "a drastic level of injury" to workers even at the present speeds.

If working conditions are this bad, and workers get hurt this often, with current poultry line speeds, UFCW President Joe Hansen says, they'll only get worse if the lines speed up. He calls USDA's proposal "reckless."

"One injury is one too many," Hansen said. "Four out of ten workers with carpal tunnel. Nearly six out of ten showing symptoms. This is an epidemic."

Instead of trying to speed up the poultry lines, Hansen added, the plant owners should adopt NIOSH's recommendations to help the workers. Some of them are: Designing job tasks at levels industry experts recommend, provide workers with more than one break per shift and increasing reporting, screening and treatment of musculoskeletal disorders.

Until that's done, "USDA must pull this rule and take a hard look at how to improve safety in our nation's poultry plants," Hansen said. "This NIOSH report is both a wakeup call and a warning sign."

The unions are not alone in criticizing USDA's chicken inspection scheme. Citing a report from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, 68 lawmakers also asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to backtrack on the inspection rule.

They said the GAO study shows the inspection model is flawed, that USDA drafted the rule with too little consultation outside of the industry, and that it could harm food safety as well as the workers' health.

"While we strongly support modernizing our food safety system and making it more efficient, modernization should not occur at the expense of public health, worker safety, or animal welfare," Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., James Moran, D-Va. And others wrote to Vilsack. DeLauro and Moran are members of the House Appropriations Committee, one of the key panels that decide where USDA spends its money. "We harbor serious concerns over what we believe are the Food Safety Inspection Service's (FSIS) inadequate considerations to date of these issues in promulgating this rule."

Workers at a processing plant prepare cleaned and gutted chickens for packaging. (AP Photo/J.Scott Applewhite)

Autoworkers drop appeal of election loss at Chattanooga VW plant

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 13:35:00 +0000

DETROIT (PAI)--The United Auto Workers are dropping their federal appeal of their narrow recognition election loss at Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tenn., plant. Instead, union President Bob King says, they will concentrate on a probe by congressional Democrats of political interference that led to the Valentine's Day defeat.

The union added it will also concentrate on ensuring that a new sport utility vehicle assembly line comes to Chattanooga. The top two Republican pols who interfered, Gov. Bill Haslam and Sen. Bob Corker, promised that - if, the two said, the workers rejected the union.

The union lost the vote 712-628 after threats by both politicians and other ruling Tennessee Republicans to yank tax breaks and other state aid from VW in Chattanooga if the workers went union. The Chattanooga drive was a key part of the UAW's effort to enter non-union foreign auto firm "transplants" in the anti-union South, as well as part of labor's overall effort to increase union density in that region.

Besides the interference from Corker and Haslam, outside Radical Right groups also pumped millions of dollars worth of anti-labor anti-union advertising into the Chattanooga area, with billboards and ads linking the UAW to President Obama and saying the union would take away peoples' guns.

King's April 21 announcement said raising the issue of the political interference made the union's point, even without the National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge's hearing on the case, scheduled for this week. King added the NLRB hearing was hampered by refusal of the two pols to appear.

The UAW "based its decision on the belief that the NLRB's historically dysfunctional and complex process potentially could drag on for months or even years. Additionally, the UAW cited refusals by Haslam and Corker to participate in a transparent legal discovery process, which undermines public trust and confidence," the union said in a statement.

"The unprecedented political interference by Haslam, Corker and others was a distraction for Volkswagen employees and a detour from achieving Tennessee's economic priorities," King said. "The UAW is ready to put February's tainted election in the rearview mirror and instead focus on advocating for new jobs and economic investment in Chattanooga."

"UAW wants to help create quality jobs and build world-class products for American consumers," the union's southern regional director, Gary Casteel, added. "With this in mind, we urge Haslam to immediately extend the incentives that previously were offered to Volkswagen for this new SUV line, and do so unconditionally."

Instead of pursuing the NLRB's legal process, the union is banking on Congress to continue to shine the spotlight on the political interference with the vote.

That spotlight may come if Haslam replies to an April 16 letter from Reps. George Miller, D-Calif., and John Tierney, D-Mass., seeking state documents and e-mails relating to the Chattanooga vote. Miller is the top Democrat on the GOP-run politically polarized House Education and the Workforce Committee.

Citing their oversight responsibilities, the two lawmakers "respectfully request information about whether any Tennessee state officials directly or indirectly conditioned, or threatened to condition, state aid to Volkswagen (VW) on the outcome of the efforts to establish a union and/or works council at the Chattanooga plant," their letter says.

VW was neutral in the election and its officials said it favored a works council at Chattanooga to handle labor-management relations in a joint, cooperative manner. VW has works councils at all plants worldwide, except Chattanooga and China. It also has a master works council, mandated by law, at headquarters.

"Workers at the Chattanooga plant have sought union representation with the United Auto Workers and the creation of a local works council, a labor relations model based on other VW plants around the world," the letter added.

"A National Labor Relations Board election...was intended to allow workers at the plant to freely choose whether to unionize, and ultimately bargain for a works council, a right guaranteed to them under federal law. Objections have been filed to that election, alleging the process was tainted by actions and statements of outside parties, including state officials.

"Recent press reports suggest Tennessee officials may have conditioned state aid...for adding a new full-size sport utility vehicle line to the VW plant on the outcome of the workers' representation question. For example, a document prepared by state officials dated August 23, 2013, entitled 'Project Trinity Final Summary of Incentives,' proposes various cash grants, tax exemptions, and tax credits in support of the VW expansion and included a provision stating such aid was 'subject to works council discussion between the state of Tennessee and VW being concluded to the satisfaction of the state of Tennessee.'"

"In circumstances in which state aid has been conditioned or is threatened to be conditioned on the outcome of a question of workers' representation, Congress has a significant interest. Such state-level conditioning may undermine employees' federally guaranteed freedom to choose whether or not to be represented by a union," Miller and Tierney said. They asked for the documents within 30 days.

Photo: Anti-union billboard from right-wing website workerfreedom.org

Okla. governor bars cities from setting minimum wage

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 14:42:00 +0000

OKLAHOMA CITY - In what many here are calling an attack on workers' rights and democracy, Oklahoma Republican Gov. Mary Fallin has signed a bill prohibiting cities, counties, and their citizens the right to set a mandatory minimum wage and employee benefits such as paid sick leave.

Her action came in response to workers and advocates in Oklahoma City who are working toward raising the city's minimum wage to $10.10. By signing the bill, they say, Fallin has effectively taken away local workers' right to vote on their own cities' minimum wage and worker benefits.

The bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Randy Grau, R-Edmond. He claimed that the bill "provides a level playing field for all municipalities in Oklahoma. An artificial raise in the minimum wage could derail local economies in a matter of months. This is a fair measure for consumers, workers and small business owners."

Fallin argued that "Most minimum-wage workers are young, single people working part-time or entry-level jobs. Many are high school or college students living with their parents in middle-class families."

But the Economic Policy Institute points out that 88 percent of workers who would directly benefit from a raise in minimum wage are over the age of 20, and approximately 35 percent are over the age of 40.

David Slain, the lawyer who wrote the petition for a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage in Oklahoma City, expressed disappointed that the Legislature "would vote in such a way to take the right of the people to decide minimum wage." Those who are collecting signatures to petition for a statewide vote will continue to do so, he said, and they hope to reach 4,000 by the end of April. To put the initiative on the state ballot, 80,000 signatures are required.

Photo: Efforts to raise the minimum wage are happening across the country. Here, a rally in Wisconsin. Wisconsin Jobs Now CC

The Ludlow Massacre: Never to be forgotten!

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 14:00:00 +0000

LUDLOW, Colo. (PAI) - It's neither unpatriotic nor exaggeration to remember the Ludlow Massacre 100 years ago this week. The tragic, brutal and deadly attack on striking miners and their families shocked, saddened and outraged working people and most Americans.

Writing in The Masses magazine, Max Eastman said, "I put the ravages of that black orgy of April - when a frail, fluttering tent city in the meadow, the dwelling place of 120 women and 273 children, was riddled to shreds without a second's warning, and then fired by coal-oil torches with the bullets still raining and the victims screaming in their shallow holes of refuge, or crawling away on their bellies through the fields - I put that crime, not upon its perpetrators, who are savage, but upon the gentlemen of noble leisure who hired them to this service.

"Flags of truce were shot out of hands; women running in the sunlight to rescue their children were whipped back with the hail of a machine gun; little girls who plunged into a shed for shelter were followed there with 48-caliber bullets; a gentle Greek, never armed, was captured running to the rescue of those women and children dying in a hole, was captured without resistance, and after five minutes lay dead under a broken rifle, his skull crushed and bullet holes in his back, and the women and children still dying in the hole."

The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by Colorado National Guard soldiers and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of more than 1,000 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colo., on April 20, 1914. Dozens of people, including women and children, were killed. John D. Rockefeller Jr., the chief mine owner, was denounced worldwide for the incident.

Specifically, National Guard troops stationed in the hills above the largest tent colony at Ludlow started firing into miners' tents, killing some of them. What became a day-long skirmish between company guards and militia on the one side and striking workers on the other was the deadliest single incident in the Southern Colorado Coal Strike, organized by the United Mine Workers (UMW) against coal mine operators.

In an April 22, 1914, article headlined "45 dead, 20 hurt, scores missing in strike war: Women and children roasted in pits of tent colony as flames destroy it," the New York Times reported on the "14-hour battle which raged with uninterrupted fury yesterday between state troops and striking coal miners in the Ludlow district on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the Rockefeller holdings."

Historian Howard Zinn said in The Politics of History that the Ludlow Massacre was "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history."

As Julia May Courtney wrote in Mother Earth, "For the first time in the history of the labor war in America the people are with the strikers."

BACKGROUND: A few operators, including Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel & Iron, the Victor-American Fuel and Rocky Mountain Fuel, dominated the Colorado coal industry. With about seven deaths per 1,000 employees - more than twice the national rate of 3.15 then - miners knew that over the previous 30 years in Colorado mining, accidents claimed the lives of more than 1,700 people.

Ludlow itself was a coal mine and camp about 18 miles north of Trinidad in southeast Colorado not far from New Mexico. Miners lived in substandard housing owned by the company, which also operated stores that accepted only company "scrip," an alternative currency.

Fed up, the miners organized and presented operators with seven demands: Recognize the UMW as bargaining agent, abide by the 8-hour-day law, enforce state laws on mine safety and end the company-guard system, free workers to shop at any store, and live where they wanted, increase tonnage rates (giving miners about a 10% raise), pay miners for "dead work" (shoring up tunnels, laying track, etc.), and make weight-check men elected (to keep them honest).

Supporters noted that many of the demands were for employers to follow the law, and Congress confirmed that. The U.S. House Committee on Mines and Mining that year reported that "Colorado has good mining laws and such that ought to afford protection to the miners as to safety in the mine if they were enforced, yet in this state the percentage of fatalities is larger than any other, showing there is undoubtedly something wrong in reference to the management of its coal mines."

Nevertheless, operators rejected the demands, the Mine Workers called a work stoppage, and strikers were immediately forced from their company hovels. They moved into tents built on wooden platforms on land the union rented. Evicted from their shacks in the mine canyons, strikers and their families trudged away, as described by

Denver Express reporter Don MacGregor: "They struggled along the roads interminably, in an hour's drive between Trinidad and Ludlow, 57 wagons were passed, and others seemed to be streaming down to the main road from every by-path.

"Every wagon was the same, with its high-piled furniture, and its bewildered woebegone family perched atop. And the furniture! What a mockery to the state's boasted riches. Little piles of miserable-looking straw bedding! Little piles of kitchen utensils! And all so worn and badly used they would have been the scorn of any second-hand dealer."

With their modest tents, miners created a colony just as winter started. That sparked Colorado Gov. Elias Ammon - arguably a Scott Walker of his era by kowtowing to Big Business - to call out the National Guard to "keep order."

The union enlisted as organizers the UMW's John Lawson, Greek activist Louis Tikas and 77-year-old Mary "Mother" Jones. The authorities arrested, imprisoned and escorted Jones out of Colorado before the massacre, but she returned. Mine operators used company thugs and the National Guard, and hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, notorious for its strike-breaking in West Virginia and other labor disputes.

Strikers held on through the winter. Colorado state government was financially strained and recalled some Guardsmen, leaving just two units in the area and letting operators deploy their own "militia," many of them company guards and some of them in National Guard uniforms.

DETAILS: The company-backed "troops" were stationed on hills around the strikers' camp, and they trained their machine guns down on the colony. On Sunday, April 19, 1914 - celebrated as Easter by Orthodox Greeks - celebrations included a baseball game in a meadow about 200 yards from the tents. Then eight armed men came down into the midst of the game and interrupted the festivities. A fist fight broke out, the guards were beaten and then tried to make arrests but had no warrants, so they were forced to leave.

The next day, in the afternoon, guards or militiamen started firing weapons into the camp, in which most men were absent, hunting or fishing. The company sent 38 men with 4,000 rounds of ammunition on a special train, which arrived between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. By 7:42 p.m., according to company records of telegrams sent, the attack was continuing on strikers and families, and guards or militiamen had poured oil on the tents before setting them ablaze.

Company gunmen drove back Red Cross relief parties.

Tikas remained in the camp all day and was still there when the fire started. He and two other men were seized by militiamen and brought to Lt. Karl Linderfelt, commander of one of two National Guard companies. Tikas and Linderfelt had confronted each other before but this time, as two militiamen held Tikas, Linderfelt clubbed him with a rifle butt and kicked him in the face.

Tikas and the other two captive miners were later found dead. Tikas had been shot in the back. Their bodies lay along the railroad tracks for three days in view of passing trains. Militia men refused to let them be taken away until a railway union demanded the bodies be moved and buried.

The morning after the militia attack, a telephone lineman going through the burned tents found the charred bodies of 11 children and 2 women in a pit under one tent. They had hidden there to escape gunfire, but were trapped when the tent above them was set on fire.

Afterward, organized labor issued a call for union members to arm themselves, and a guerrilla war of sorts resulted over more than a week of confrontations. Hundreds of strikers "attacked mine after mine, driving off or killing the guards and setting fire to the buildings," according to Stephen Norwood in Strikebreaking & Intimidation, until federal troops were dispatched to the region.

The whole strike would cost between 69 and 199 lives. Thomas G. Andrews in his book, Killing For Coal, described it as the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States." Eight months later, the Mine Workers had exhausted their resources and called off the strike.

Editor's note: In 1918, the Mine Workers erected a monument at the site of the massacre. In 2009, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated Ludlow a National Historic Landmark. UMWA President Cecil Roberts said:

"This is the culmination of years of work by UMWA members, retirees and staff, as well as many hundreds of ordinary citizens who recognize and have fought to preserve the memory of this brutal attack on workers and their families.

"The tragic lessons from Ludlow still echo through our nation, and they must never be forgotten by Americans who truly care about workplace fairness and equality. With this designation, the story of what happened at Ludlow will remain part of our nation's history."

Photo: Families of the Ludlow tent colony. Wikimedia commons

UPS firing of Teamster drivers rescinded

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 10:53:00 +0000

It started on Feb. 26 when a Teamster Local 804 shop steward challenged UPS management about a violation of the union contract at its giant Maspeth, Queens, New York facility. It led to the mass firing by UPS of 250 Teamster union members when they walked out in solidarity with the brother's firing on trumped up charges.

What unfolded over the next several weeks was a showdown between UPS, one or the largest and most profitable delivery services in the world, and the Teamsters union, behind whom ultimately stood New York City's organized labor.

In a big victory on Apr. 9, UPS was forced to rescind its PATCO-style firing. All 250 union drivers were hired back, including the fired worker, Jairo Reyes.

In a big public relations setback for UPS, it agreed "to improve labor-management relations at the company and to handle disciplinary disputes more expeditiously under the new grievance procedure." (Which was the issue raised by union activists in the first place).

Since the shifting of U.S. manufacturing overseas, UPS now possesses the largest number of unionized workers of any corporation located in the U.S. The Teamsters strike against UPS in 1997 was very successful.

Workers in interviews stated the job action was the result of intense speed-up and harassment, and a management that uses minor infractions of work rules to intimidate the workforce.

Countering management allegations this was an "illegal work stoppage," the union pointed to frequent violations of its contract at the facility, and the contractual right of the union to conduct work stoppages when the contract is violated.

For both sides, the stakes were tremendous. Labor knew if UPS got away with this, it would send a message to workers around the country that union contracts aren't worth much, let alone be a future weapon for workers in their fight for decent wages, a better life, of dignity and respect.

For UPS , it was intended as a warning to all workers who dared to protest the company's increasingly ferocious speedup, constant technological surveillance, and "flexible" work schedules.

Driver Tom Oliver, who participated in the walkout, said of the UPS reversal, "It's a sweet victory that only happened because we stuck together and we got tremendous support. Even with all the stress that came with the walkout and the aftermath, it brought attention to a lot of problems with our facility that I hope can be corrected."

The victory, and the labor-community campaign that paved the way for it, showed how old-fashioned labor solidarity, combined with imaginative methods of reaching out to the communities workers serve, can make the difference.

"At a time when good jobs are more and more difficult to come by, it is unconscionable that UPS workers are being fired for standing up for basic rights," said Vincent Alvarez, president of New York's Central Labor Council, at one of several rallies around the firings.

Also present at rallies were representatives of Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union, the New York State Nurses Association, Service Employees 32 BJ, the Laborers Union, and Communications Workers of America.

Newly elected Public Advocate Letitia James pointed to a $43 million contract with city and state agencies up for renewal, "and if UPS does not do right by the workers in this city, then the city will not do right by UPS."

Teamsters, with the help of elected officials, got out the word about a sweetheart deal with the now departed Bloomberg administration that continues to enable UPS to write off $20 million in parking tickets each year.

In an attempt to divide workers from the community they serve, UPS executives claimed that they "owed it to their customers" to fire the workers, because the 90 minute work stoppage "jeopardized our ability to maintain order in our delivery operations. "

But rather than UPS' action winning customer support, it only provoked public outrage.

Fired Local 804 drivers encouraged customers to show support, including through the use of iPhone videos. Customers posed with the fired drivers with signs that said, "What Can Brown Do For Me? Not This! Rehire This Guy!" Veterans of the successful 1997 strike showed younger drivers how it was done in the old days.

The Working Families Party, a political party of affiliated unions and community organizations, helped the Teamsters gather 105,000 petition signatures Over 3,000 calls were placed in one day to UPS CEO Scott Davis, protesting the firings. An MSNBC poll "Gutcheck" poll totaled 90 percent support for reinstatement of the UPS drivers on Apr. 8.

In forcing UPS to reverse the firing of the 250, the union did not get everything it wanted in the final agreement. Returning workers are required, for instance, to undergo a two week suspension, and the union must pay for loss of revenue to the company for delivery time lost.

But workers returning to work voiced satisfaction that Big Brown for now had been stopped in its tracks by labor unity.

UPS workers, Fedex workers, municipal workers, fast food workers - all those struggling in New York and nationally for a better life could not help but take notice. Labor solidarity worked!

Photo: A UPS worker delivers packages. Paul Sakuma/AP